A faith is not acquired by reasoning. One does not fall in love with a woman, or enter the womb of a church, as a result of logical persuasion. Reason may defend an act of faith-but only after the act has been committed, and the man committed to the act. Persuasion may playa part in a man’s conversion; but only the part of bringing to its full and conscious climax a process which has been maturing in regions where no persuasion can penetrate. A faith is not acquired; it grows like a tree. Its crown points to the sky; its roots grow downward into the past and are nourished by the dark sap of the ancestral humus. One of my favorite paragraphs is this one by Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon

By the time the Superbowl LVII – 57 in real numbers – started, I was pretty much convinced Philadelphia would win. That’s what most of the experts were saying, anyway, and the only games I saw this year were several playoff games, so I didn’t have much to go on. The Eagles looked terrific against the New York Football Giants – as Howard Cosell used to call them – and against the quarterback-less Niners, but because they did lose to the Cowboys in December, I thought it was possible the Chiefs could beat them. I really had no basis on which to make a prediction, so thought is probably the wrong word; hoped is perhaps more accurate.

I wasn’t always this apathetic about football; I used to follow it religiously. That was back before the AFL/NFL merger. In 1966, I moved to Oakland, where I fell in love with the Raiders and then the American Professional Football League. From its founding in 1959 to the merger in 1970, the American League were the scrappy underdogs, the revolutionaries, the change-bringers, going up against the established and staid National Football Empire. I even had season tickets, although my passion was not enough to paint my house silver, like a neighbor’s.

Although I never considered him a father figure, my stepfather, Sherry, and I bonded over football. Sherry was a nice guy, in a formal, courtly, way, who married my mother while I was stationed in Korea. He got me my first indoor job, but we never knew each other very well until our football bonding. Sherry also had season tickets, in his case, for the 49ers, the Establishment. This was back when the Niners were playing at Kezar Stadium. We each took the other to a game at the rival’s home stadium several times a year. It wasn’t really an equal trade, however, my stepfather’s tickets were fifteen rows up on the forty-five-yard line in the intimate Kezar, and mine were on the twenty-yard line all the way up, towards the back of the third deck in the much bigger Oakland Colosseum. From Sherry’s seats, we could hear Johnny Unitas calling the signals; from my seats, it was a little like watching the game on TV but with more collective emotion.

Each of us thought our team was better or, at least, more fun to watch. I didn’t see the first AFL-NFL World Championship, as it was then called, when the Green Bay Packers stuffed Kansas City by 25 points. My excuse was that the Raiders were out of the championship, and it was ski season. To Sherry, who did see the game, it proved the Established National League was better than the upstart American League. Even though I hadn’t seen the game, I still had an opinion, and to me, all the game proved was that Green Bay was the best team in football. That one game did not prove that the entire NFL was better. Even when, a year later, in a game, I did see Green Bay maul another AFL team, this time, the Oakland Raiders, I still held that position. I guess I still do.

Even after the end of the third Championship game, The New York Jets Soundly Beating the Mighty Baltimore Colts Game, both Sherry and I remained locked into our belief that our league was better. Although we were both surprised that the Jets had won, it was for different reasons. At best, I thought the Jets were the third-best team in the AFL, and Sherry, who believed the AFL was inferior, thought the Jets winning was just a fluke (although he said it much more diplomatically).

During the third Championship game, Sherry called me when the Jets scored first – I think he was in shock – and we decided, then and there, to get together for the next Championship game, which was to be the last before the merger in which the American Football League would disappear into the NFL. From today’s perspective, it seems strange that Sherry and I had never watched a game on TV together, but it was a different time. Going to a football game together was an upscale social activity; we wore ties, of course, but rather than a suit, we wore sports jackets – do people even use that term anymore? it’s just like a suit, but the jacket and pants don’t match – and Sherry brought a leather case with a bottle of wine and four glasses (and, I think, sandwiches). But my mother didn’t like football, and if Sherry watched a game on TV, it was alone, down in the basement, which, theoretically, was his den.

As an aside, the Kansas City Chiefs were representing the soon to be gone AFL and their coach was Hank Stram, a short 5’7″, round guy who was funny in a cute sort of way and was the most successful coach in the AFL. In an experiment, NFL Films wired Stram during the game to be used in the highlight films (which I watched several times, probably more than is healthy, actually). My favorite Stram quote from the highlight film is : “C’mon Lenny! Pump it in there, baby! Just keep matriculating the ball down the field, boys!” Stram used the term Super for things he liked all the time, much like I use great, I guess. Anyway, while answering some question about how good the game would be, if it were going to be as good as the Orange Bowl or Rose Bowl? He answered along the lines of “It’ll be better than the Orange Bowl or Rose Bowl, it will be a “Super Bowl”. The uptight NFL didn’t like that name, they preferred World Championship Game but Super Bowl stuck. End aside.

As planned a year earlier, we went to my mother and Sherry’s house for the fourth game. The get together was another coat and tie affair, just like a real game, except in their very formal living room. We sat on French provincial chairs around, probably, a 21″ TV built in to a cabinet with a record player, and quietly rooted our team on. To honor the occasion, my mother had gone down to Fisherman’s Wharf to buy fresh crab and we had a lovely crab salad with white wine, in the dining room during the halftime break. It was my first Super Bowl Party and I still think crab is the perfect thing to serve on Super Bowl Sunday.

As an American Football League fan, the game was almost perfect. The Vikings took the opening kickoff, ran a couple of sets of plays, and punted. The Chiefs took the ball downfield for 42 yards in eight plays, and the Chiefs’ placekicker, Jan Stenerud, kicked a record 48-yard field goal from about the same place the Vikings had punted (Stenerud kicked soccer style, which the NFL had never seen before). As expected, it was a defensive game with one side being clearly superior, except that the vaulted Minnesota defensive, with the The Purple People Eaters front line, wasn’t that side. The Chiefs’ defense dominated by forcing three interceptions, recovering two fumbles, and by limiting the Minnesota offense to only 67 rushing yards.

The Washington Post said, in its coverage of the game, In 1969, football fans waited expectantly, if vainly, for the Baltimore Colts to overtake the New York Jets. Today the 80,997 witnesses in Tulane Stadium awaited only the final gun, so total was the Chiefs’ domination. and that statement was super accurate for Sherry. I had great fun Watching Kansas City dominate Minnesota; Sherry did not. To me, it proved the new guys on the block were better, and their new way of playing was better; to Sherry, it was an anomaly. Deep down in his bones, he knew the old NFL was the better League. And so did the old NFL team owners and coaches. The old AFL/new AFC won all but four of the first fifteen Super Bowls; Green Bay won the first two, and Dallas won two more spread out over the next thirteen years. The old owners couldn’t adjust. They couldn’t change because, at their core, they thought – more than thought, they knew –that they were playing football the best way; all they had to do was do it better.